Pages

2014/08/20

This October I'll be taking part in Weekend Other World, an event of "deep voyages ... at the intersection of film, fiction, music, anthropology, cosmology and occultism". I'll be talking about Performance, magick and conspiracy.

2014/08/09

Supplementary notes
originally included in an earlier draft of the Manson essay prepared for Transgressive Culture.

In 1982 David Toop wrote an article for Collusion,
‘Surfin’ Death Valley USA’,
an investigation of the connections between Manson and The Beach Boys. Writing
in 2003, Toop noted that in the years following the text’s initial publication,
new information appeared on the subject ranging from “a profile of Bobby
Beausoleil written by Truman Capote” to “a skip load of post-apocalyptic Amok –
type sleaze on Manson and the Family”. He comments that one reader wrote in
response to the article expressing “an unhealthy interest in snuff movies”.
Compounding his tone of lamentation, Toop speculates that said reader probably
“went on to write for Creation Press”.[i]

Here, Toop is referencing two idiosyncratic publishing
houses, Amok Press, and Creation Books. Both have been instrumental in
developing Manson’s ‘cult’ status. Amok published Nikolas Schreck's The Manson File,
amongst others, whilst Creation’s Manson list contains Death Trip (1994
/ 2009), a book that shares material with Schreck’s volume. Whilst these
references acknowledge the extent of the Manson catalogue, the construction of
a spectrum moving from Truman Capote to undifferentiated “sleaze” draws Amok,
Creation and by extension the critical discourse that valorises Manson into a
negative value judgement. The implication is that considerations of the Manson
milieu that move beyond condemnation or attempt to extrapolate significance
from “banal” coincidences of “geography, money and show-business” constitute a
discourse that is itself problematically transgressive: “unhealthy” and sleazy;
immoral, dishonest, disreputable.[ii]

Arguably, this point has some validity in the case of Tuesday’s
Child naming Manson ‘Man of the Year’ in 1969. However, it is too
simplistic to suggest that subsequent considerations of him as either “monster”
or “prophet” inversely correlate with good / bad modes of analysis.[iii]
This narrow binary distinction is not representative of the strategies that
have characterized 40 years of cultural production and in particular the
framing of Manson at the turn of the millennium. That is to say, when
considering the metaphor of Charles Manson, it is not sufficient to
unambiguously oppose such a phenomena. Instead, it is important to adopt a mode
of analysis that assesses the diachronic metamorphosis of Manson’s emblematic
status. Whilst he has consistently retained a symbolic currency, this is not a
position – whether presented negatively or positively – that has existed in the
absence of historical development. As such then, an evaluation of the particularized
cultural artifact that is the Amok / Creation Manson requires consideration of
the strategies underpinning its construction.

*

Amok Press was formed in New York in 1986 by Adam Parfey and Ken
Swezey. One of its earliest publications was the manifesto-like Apocalypse
Culture (1987) an attempt to analyse the forces “lurking behind” the “mass
delirium” of the late 20th century, the belief expressed on the part
of “occult prophets, nihilist kids, born agains and liberal humanists” that a
“global catastrophe” was imminent.[iv]
In practice, this investigation took the form of a series of mondo-like essays
considering fringe thought and the extremes of human behaviour. In contrast to
this subcultural anthropology, Creation Books, formed in London in 1989 by James Williamson and Alan
McGee began mainly as a publisher of “imaginative extremes”.[v]
Their initial manifesto, “the crucifixion of modern literature and the
resurrection of the imagination” was realised through the publication of
fiction and poetry by James Havoc, Alan Moore, Jeremy Reed and StuartHome.[vi]
Creation offered work that was “hallucinated and anatomical”: violent and
sexually explicit in content, nominally ‘avant-garde’ in form.[vii]
During the mid to late 1990s the company diversified into non-fiction, mainly
covering cult film and countercultural art, but as Williamson has described,
their initial stock in trade was “Poetry, pornography, pulp and plagiarism”.[viii]

Despite these generic differences both publishers used the
‘underground’ status of their authors as markers of their own marginal position
as cultural producers. Parfey identified the contributors to Apocalypse
Culture as “folk artists and folk researchers”, claiming that they acted as
“more worthy cultural barometers than the often more clever but intellectually
and emotionally corrupt professionals”.[ix]
Similarly, Williamson presented Creation Books as an antidote to the “sexless
confines of corporate publishing formats” and its material as a challenge to
notions of “literary value”.[x] In
this respect, the projects of Amok and Creation can be described as
‘transgressive’ as the term is understood in its primarily “disobedient”,
contra-normative sense.[xi]
That is to say, the intention informing their publishing programmes is one of
“symbolic inversion”, the attempt to, by example, “present an alternative to
commonly held cultural codes, values and norms”.[xii]
In the case of Williamson and Parfey, such “values and norms” are those
proposed by ‘mainstream’ publishing, (“Penguin and their obsolescent ilk”) and
the disciplinary boundaries of professional academia.[xiii]
It is through this lens of oppositional alterity that that the emphasis placed
on Charles Manson, particularly by Amok Press can initially be understood.

In the opening essay in Apocalypse
Culture, “Latter Day Lycanthropy” Parfey provides a short cultural history
of the struggle to either repress or release “the animal in man” and the
apparent late-20th century shift towards the latter in art and
culture.[xiv]
Given his emphasis on contemporary shamanic performances and Transactional
Psychology, Parfey’s essay could be seen to occupy the collection’s purported
anthropological stance, expressing an interest in what Stuart Swezey, writing
in the Amok Journal: Sensesurround
Edition calls “the pursuit of a neurobiological basis for mystical and
ecstatic experience”.[xv]
However, the article also includes an illustration of a lycanthropic Charles
Manson drawn by Nick Bougas for The
Manson File and quotes the ‘manifesto’ of Radio Werewolf, a performance
group led by Schreck that ‘celebrates the lunar force of animist apocalypse as
a reaction against directionless humanity”. The implication is that within the
cultural sphere represented by Amok, Manson acts as an exemplary figure of
amoral misanthropy. He exhibits the necessary “psychic preparation for the
millennial calamities which are thought to lie ahead”.[xvi]

Radio Werewolf performed alongside Boyd Rice’s Non at the
‘8/8/88 Rally’, a concert and ‘Satanic’ gathering that included Parfey, Anton LaVey and a screening of Frank Howard’s Manson film The Other Side of Madness(1970). Prior to this Schreck had made
the “revisionist documentary” Charles Manson Superstar (1987) that operated as something of a companion piece to The Manson File.[xvii]
In addition to making what Jim Morton describes as “hyperbolic statements about
Manson’s relative innocence”, its opening narration attributes a conspiratorial
importance to the dates of Tate-La Bianca murders.[xviii]
Schreck describes how August 8-9th corresponds with other
‘significant’ events in history such as the detonation of the nuclear bomb over
Nagasaki
(1945), the birth date of serial killer Ed Gein (1907) and the LAPD announcement
describing the activities of the ‘Night Stalker’ Richard Ramirez (1985). From
this perspective, the 8/8/88 rally acts as a further iteration of this occult
trajectory but one that centralizes Manson within the web of significance. The
concert was not promoted as a celebration of the panorama of occurrences and
figures referenced at the outset of Schreck’s film but specifically as a
“reaffirmation of the ‘riding forth’ ritual conducted on the eve of the Tate
murders in 1969”.[xix] The
event thus seems to develop the image of Manson from that of celebrated
misanthrope into an emblem of an almost archetypal ‘force’ of violence. By
extension, the lycanthropic theory that Apocalypse Culture outlines is
extended into the event’s ambivalent practice that oscillates between ritual
and actualization. The rhetoric of ‘reaffirmation’ carries the sense of both
commemoration and repetition as if to point to the memorialization of a
previous act of violence as well as its reactivation through violence yet to
come.

This attitude of overt confrontation can be read in terms of
Aesthetic Terrorism, which as George Petros describes in Art That Kills
(2008) represented a key impulse in American underground art between 1984 and
2001. Jesper Aagaard Petersen has described this ‘movement’ as “a combination
of rationalist Satanism and more expressive forms of post-punk”.[xx]
In an analysis of Petros’ “portrait” Peterson observes that he attempts to
elide religion and subculture through the discursive integration of Satanism’s
“reactive transgressions” and “an avant-garde aesthetics” [xxi]
We are told that in practice this takes the form of the “subversive use of past
clichés, knowledge and home truths being flung out of joint” as an expression
of “frustration with politics, big business and mass entertainment”.[xxii]
An associated discourse, John Aes-Nihil’s Aesthetic Nihilism codifies this
subversion further as a reaction against society and mass culture through “the
creation of art so extreme it verges on destruction”.[xxiii]

This framework of critical provocation offers a potential
negotiation of the difficult territory that this work inhabits. The recognition
of a symbolically violent artistic ideology could be seen to allow for a
differentiation between “transgressive play and problematic politics”.[xxiv]
Certainly, if its ‘satirical’ component is accepted, such negativity could be
viewed in terms of a reflexive critique. However, the residue of ‘problematic
politics’ remains insofar as the emphasis placed upon individuality,
self-realization and self-empowerment (man into wolf) within Amok publications
and their associated events could be seen in terms of an aggressive Social
Darwinism. Ideas ranging from the cultivation of a millennial resilience to the
creation of ambiguously “intense” work appear to connect social and artistic
development to the exercise of personal ‘strength’. When mediated through the
emblem of Manson, it is hard to perceive this antinomianism in terms other than
an idealization of physical violence.

In the case of Creation, although the company published Art that Kills, the situation regarding
their representation of Manson is less politically vexed. However, it
nonetheless remains problematic mainly due to the extent to which he is
repeatedly fetishized across their publications. In ‘celebration’ of the 40th
anniversary of the Tate-La Bianca murders, Creation re-published Adam
Gorightly’s The Shadow Over Santa Susanna (2009), a text that repeated
Schreck’s conspiratorial claims whilst connecting them to further nodal points.
Gorightly is a writer concerned with ufology, Forteana and conspiracy research,
subjects that are not the specific preserve of Creation Books. However, the
text can be seen as an appropriate publication choice as its mapping of the
Manson web is indicative of the manner in which. Creation texts often seem to
revel in the aura of Manson’s infamy and the range of culturally resonant
connections extending out from the murders. ‘Mansonoid’ allusions are present
in Creation’s early fictional publications especially by flagship author James
Havoc. His short story ‘Zipper Fox: A Synopsis’ (1996) has characters “cruising
the night sands in one of Charlie Manson’s old dune buggies”. In his foreword
to Havoc’s Butchershop in the Sky
(1999), Williamson attempts to cultivate a correspondingly ‘Luciferean’ persona
for the writer.[xxv]
Describing Havoc’s life in Brighton,
Williamson parodies Ed Sanders’ prose style used in The Familyto recall that “one young woman was encouraged to take
LSD and lured back to find his flat literally draped in fresh meat. Oo-ee-oo.”[xxvi]
In addition, Creation’s initial ‘sampler’ Cease
to Exist (1991) took as its title the Scientology mantra that Manson used
as the basis for one of his songs, later recorded by The Beach Boys as ‘Never
Learn Not to Love You’.

In subsequent publications this fascination is maintained
not so much by the contents of the often very different books, but in the
language of the paratextual material used to market them. With a nod to Sonic
Youth, Charlie’s Family (1998),an edition of Jim VanBebber’s
screenplay for The Manson Family
(2003) is described as offering an “uncompromising cinematic portrayal of the
exterminating angels of Death Valley ‘69”.[xxvii] Death Trip is “an iconoclastic study of
Manson as Psychopathic God”,[xxviii]
whilst the blurb for Gorightly’s text
merges this fatalistic energy with an appeal to the transgressive consumer,
calling it “an illustrated kill-bible for the coffee-tables of all
self-respecting true crime buffs, counter-culture freaks and teenage
satanists”.[xxix]
Recent publications such as Jack Hunter’s Surfin’ with Satan (2010) and Confessions
of Psycho-Cat (2010) take this movement towards commodity fetishism one
step further. Printed in single runs of only 69 copies they materially exploit
the talismanic significance of 1969 to produce objects of high-value scarcity.

In each case, whether the promotion of Manson is figured as
a means of cultural subversion or cultural commodification, it is a promotion
that seemingly negates the human cost at the centre of the case. The resonance of
the murderer is celebrated in the absence of a consideration of those murdered.
As result, to use a phrase frequently included in Creation’s marketing, this
artistic ideology appears somewhat ‘terminal’. It ostensibly reiterates a
“cultish fixation” that does not cultivate value.[xxx] Whilst
the individual cultural products participate, as highlighted in a level of
critique, their surrounding publishing discourse works within a rhetoric of
destruction that does not leave recognizable space for the subsequent
development of the forms that such work seeks to deconstruct.

Notes

[i] David
Toop, ‘Surfin’ Death Valley USA:
The Beach Boys and ‘Heavy’ Friends’, Collusion February-April 1982.
Reprinted in The Sound and the Fury
ed. by Barney Hoskyns and David Pringle (London:
Bloomsbury, 2003), pp. 399-407.

[v] Alan
McGee was head of Creation Records and the publishing company, Creation Press,
was set up as an adjunct to this main enterprise. In 1994 Creation Books became
an independent entity under Williamson’s editorship. There was an interesting
cross over between the two projects during the early stages. This included the
company’s first publication, Raism
(1989) by James Havoc and the accompanying album, The Church of Raism
featuring Havoc backed by members of Primal Scream. See James Williamson,
“Introduction: Apocalypse 451” in Dust: A Creation Books Reader (London:
Creation Books, 1995), pp.i-ii.

About Me

Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology

Collection of essays edited by Jack Hunter features my essay on William Burroughs, magick and recording technology. Available now.

Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts

Annotated screenplay text with archival dossier, unpublished writings and a series of new essays. Nohzone Archive.

Framework 52: Things Fall Apart.

2 volume set of texts, documents, extracts, photographs and essays covering the life and work of Peter Whitehead. Available now from Wayne State University Press.

Selections from the Nohzone Archive.

Collection of rare photographs and previously unpublished documents covering the production of Peter Whitehead's films between 1965 and 1969. Part of the digital resource collection 'Rock n Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest'. Available now from Adam Matthew Digital.

Crash Cinema: Representation in Film

Collection of essays edited by Mark Goodall, Jill Good and Will Godfrey featuring my essay on Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962). Available now from Cambridge Scholar's Press.

Telegraph for Garlic

Collection of essays on Bram Stoker's Dracula edited by Samia Ounoughi that features my essay on Dracula and phonography. Available now from Red Rattle Books.